Access to internet has exposed today's learners to wide pool of knowledge. But acquisition of information, analyzing, and applying it depends upon the learner's level of preparedness and engagement. Using the method of experiment the researchers tried to understand how the effectiveness of self-directed learning and instructor-led learning varies with the above-mentioned parameters. Our findings broadly indicate that while the learning outcome with self-learning scores better than that of instructor-led learning in the courses where understanding and remembering the concepts is more important, the opposite happened for the courses where the application of the concepts get a higher focus.